The Complete Inventor to VRML Conversion Guide
Table of Contents
- General Information
- Converting and Optimizing Inventor Files to VRML
- What are Inventor and VRML files commonly used for?
- Comparison of Features Supported by Inventor and VRML
- Limitations of Inventor Files to VRML Conversion Workflow
- What's the best way to get Inventor files into my 3D applications, and are there alternatives to using VRML?
General Information
This guide is part of the RapidPipeline 3D Formats Knowledge Database. It shows how to convert Inventor to VRML, if you'd like to know more about the formats, please check out the following links:
Converting and Optimizing Inventor Files to VRML
RapidPipeline can import Inventor files, but currently doesn't support exporting to VRML format yet.
If you specifically need VRML export functionality for your workflow, please feel free to get in touch with us - we'd be happy to discuss your requirements and potential timeline for adding this export capability.
If you need, you can import VRML files and convert them to any of these 8 formats: FBX, glTF, OBJ, PLY, STL, USD, USDZ, and VRM.
In the meantime, you can explore other options on the 3D Formats Knowledge Database, which might serve as suitable alternatives for your workflow depending on your target applications and use cases.
Comparison of Features Supported by Inventor and VRML
| Feature | Supported by Inventor | Supported by VRML |
|---|---|---|
| Morph Targets | No | Partial0 |
| Rigid Animations | Partial1 | Yes |
| Skinned Animations | No | No |
| Animations | Partial2 | Yes |
| Free-Form Surfaces | Yes | Partial3 |
| Geometry Compression | No | No |
| Quad Meshes | Yes | Partial4 |
| Basic 3D Geometry | Yes | Yes |
| PBR Materials | Partial5 | No |
| Transparent Materials | Yes | Yes |
| Vertex Colors | Partial6 | Yes |
| Materials | Yes | Yes |
| Scene Composition | Yes | Yes |
| Hierarchical Scene Graph | Yes | Yes |
| Scene Nodes | Yes | Yes |
| Standardized Format | Partial7 | Yes |
| Embedded Textures | Partial8 | No |
| Multiple UV Channels | Partial9 | Partial10 |
| Normal Mapping | No | No |
| Procedural Textures | No | Partial11 |
| Texture Compression | No | No |
| Texture Transforms | Partial12 | Yes |
| Texturing | Partial13 | Yes |
Limitations of Inventor Files to VRML Conversion Workflow
The following limitations should be taken into account when converting Inventor files to VRML format:
| Inventor Feature (not supported by VRML) | Limitation Details |
|---|---|
| Free-Form Surfaces | Free-Form Surfaces Support: Inventor: Full support | VRML: Partial support   VRML Notes: Limited NURBS support in VRML 2.0 Impact: Free-form surfaces allow a CAD user to design surfaces with advanced controls over curvature and continuitiy. While these surfaces are common for CAD models (in the form of so-called boundary representations or "B-reps"), they need to be converted to polygonal triangle or quad data to work with most 3D rendering engines - a process called tessellation. In this example, a surface patch is used to describe a part of a curved surface of a product. Without support for this feature, the free-form surface has to be tessellated into quads or triangles. |
| Quad Meshes | Quad Meshes Support: Inventor: Full support | VRML: Partial support   VRML Notes: Primarily triangle-based with some quad support Impact: Quad meshes are a common way to hand-model and edit 3D models. 3D artists get intuitive control and such meshes are also easy to refine, as well as well-suited for creation of skinned animations. However, real-time rendering pipelines and hardware are usually all based on triangles, so if a 3D model should not be edited any more, it is safe to convert quads to triangles (and engines will do this automatically before sending data to the rendering hardware). In this example, a part of a mesh is modeled with quads. Without support for this feature, quads will have to be triangulated, producing a pure triangle mesh. |
| Embedded Textures | Embedded Textures Support: Inventor: Partial support | VRML: No support   Inventor Notes: Textures can be included with material definitions but with limited embedding capabilities compared to graphics-focused formats. Impact: Embedded textures allow the storage and exchange of an entire 3D model and its materials within a single file, by embedding the texture images directly into the 3D file (and not storing them as separate image files). Without support for this feature, textures have to be stored in separate image files, and referenced from the main 3D model file. |
| PBR Materials | PBR Materials Support: Inventor: Partial support | VRML: No support   Inventor Notes: Basic physically-based rendering material support through appearance properties for realistic visualization and presentation. Impact: PBR materials enable Physically-Based-Rendering (PBR) for a standardized, photorealistic look of rendered images. PBR uses concepts like metallic-roughness or specular-glossiness properties and a microfacet-based modeling of the surface, using a concept called BRDF (Bi-Directional Reflectance Distribution Function). In this example, PBR materials are used to achieve realistic looking plastic and metal materials. Without support for PBR materials, only basic colors and shading can be used (for example, based on more simple shading models, such as the Blinn/Phong model). |
What's the best way to get Inventor files into my 3D applications, and are there alternatives to using VRML?
Doing 3D conversion right, especially at scale, can be tricky, as 3D data is in general a rather complex (yet very powerful!) medium. This also applies to Inventor and VRML files - the conversion guide above provides a rough first idea about that. Once you know what you would like to do, tools like RapidPipeline can help you perform the necessary steps, and to even automate the process for thousands or even millions of files.
Especially when introducing pipelines and workflows at scale in an enterprise context, it is usually good to rely on dedicated tools and expertise, making sure you do not introduce any steps into your 3D workflow that are detrimental to the final output's quality, or that take your team too much time (and money).
If you're interested to hire dedicated expertise from the best in the field to help your company reach your goals fast and reliably, please do not hestitate to contact DGG. Being the creators of RapidPipeline, and ambassadors for open 3D standards for more than a decade, we have been building some of the world's most advanced 3D pipelines, having processed many millions of 3D assets.
Therefore, our expertise will help you to reach your goals faster, at scale, and with the least possible friction, since we are focused on maximum interoperability.
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